


Service

by sternflammenden



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-13
Updated: 2012-05-13
Packaged: 2017-11-05 06:52:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/403605
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sternflammenden/pseuds/sternflammenden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was only in the presence of death she felt love.</p>
<p>written for throneland on LJ's kink meme</p>
            </blockquote>





	Service

No One is content to serve. In the House of Black and White, there is no time to sit in contemplation; there are lessons to be learnt, and as she advances as an acolyte, there are lessons to teach each novice. She learns the witchery that permits her to wear new faces, her hands smoothing alien features over her own, and she walks out into the world, garbed in another’s self, another’s life. She fills the pools with poisons, ministers to the dying, tends to the dead. No One learns that there is nothing twisted or fearsome about her work. It is merely mercy that she and her Guild offer, and nothing more. 

Sometimes, though, she remembers another life where she had a name, where she had brothers, a sister, and in her mind’s eye, she can imagine hazy outlines of children, red heads shining in the winter sun, one black head, who is special to her, who is close. Sometimes there is a wolf at her side, breath and tongue hot on her hand, on her face. Sometimes there is a mother with kind hands, and a father with a gentle smile that is just for her, and those are the times that hurt the most, the memories that she does not often permit to surface, for they only bring pain and fear and shame. It is then that she feels most alone. It is then that she is afraid.

But when she is at her task, when she is in His service, that aloneness dissipates, and No One knows, deep in what little heart remains to her, that she is loved, that she has a place, that she belongs. And this is what she clings to.


End file.
